The infrared target enhancement method based on optimization at the whole directional polarization

An infrared target enhancement method based on optimization in the whole directional polarization is studied in this paper. By using the description relationship between the stokes vector of incident light and the intensity of emergent light, the analytical formula between the intensity of emergent light and the polarizing angle is deduced, and thus virtually derives the intensity of emergent light from 0°to 360° polarizing angle. Then according to the criterion of maximum contrast between target and background, the searching of optimal polarizing angle is iteratively realized, and finally gets the enhanced infrared target image. The feasibility and validity of the algorithm are validated by using real long wave infrared (LWIR) polarization images of target. Experimental results show that, the enhanced image using proposed algorithm possesses obvious suppression effect of background clutter, and the quantitative evaluation under two kinds of image quality evaluation indexes of average gradient and image entropy also validates the effectiveness of our algorithm in infrared target enhancement.